Gold
by KaleidoscopeKate
Summary: Gale and Madge reflect on their encounters with each other, each having regrets, grudges, as well as some slightly different feelings that they never knew how to show.
1. Sterling Silver

**A/N: **Squee! My first Hunger Games story. Thanks to my indisposable best friend, Charlie, for reading over it. Luhve ya Charrzzz, you idiot ;)

**Sterling Silver**

oOo

I used to know her as silver, from her porcelain skin, her icy eyes, and the snowy dress she wore that day.

Silver, shining and colorless, seemed to me to lack humanity. After all, what was humanity if not experience and equality and the ability to sympathize with others? Silver was the same color as the gleaming Capitol. Distant, cold, and heartless. Or at least ignorant, not knowing true pain. Not capable of true emotion. Only a pretty, shimmering picture_._

Pretty but loathsome, she was a plain and silver portrait.

I'd bought a pair of sterling-silver earrings for my mother one year. They were elegant and lovely, but highly luxurious and impractical. I hated those earrings, and I hated the fact that they had disappeared within a week. We were living in the Seam, after all. Silver was highly prized: a rarity.

Silver was so different from copper.

Copper, dull copper, weathered and rugged to the point where you could barely make out its shine. Copper like our matching dark eyes, like the dull coins that meant supper, and like the color our hands were stained at the end of every day from the mix of dirt and blood.

Copper had been through hell and made it out with attitude. Copper was common as sparrows and worthless as shit, comparatively. Compared to silver, which floated aloof, barely cognizant of an unhappy reality.

I snapped at her, jabbed at her dress, and, with a mere _hint_ of sensitivity, let her know exactly what I was thinking. Sterling was silver, perhaps no better than the rest of _them_, but certainly better than us. My imaginary figment of myself stomped right up to my imaginary figment of her, scoffed, and spat on those shiny new shoes.

My real self opted for maturity, and I ended up being only _slightly_ condescending. It felt good, but it wasn't nice, and it turned out to be unfortunately mortifying.

Because, as it turned out, there was a lot I didn't know about Sterling.

oOo

Verging on tears, I shut the door in their faces with a simple wish of luck to only one of them.

_Just the way it is, _as if he knew everything. The arrogant boy from the Seam, making me feel inferior.

Because _he_ had taken tesserae (who gives a damn about the actually getting _picked_ part?), he considered himself to have worlds of experience more than me. Worlds smarter than me. Worlds more deserving than me. Worlds better than me.

I fiddle with my pin, thinking of my aunt. We're all together in District Twelve, at the very least. The most deprived of all the Districts to begin with. Hell, _all_ of the Districts are in it together, sending our children and friends and siblings away, never to return from the lair of our enemy.

There's never a good excuse to turn your nose up at potential friends, but this strikes me as a particularly bad one. Districts One and Two? Maybe; they've made it clear where their loyalties lie.

But a girl in your own District, in your own dire straits? A girl who's offered nothing but friendship to you and the girl that you love? A girl whose family buys your ridiculously-priced strawberries with the excuse of a sweet tooth, because they know your family needs the money more? However minutely more fortunate she may be than you, she's still in for a hell of a ride with you. Especially now.

I overheard something from my father's office the other day, hush, whisper, hush.

I'm terrified even to think about it, because they could be anywhere. I'm terrified that it's inside my own house, that my father knows about it, but I'm too terrified to even tell him how terrified I am.

Something beginning with a man named Cinna, and ending with a hell of a fight.

It might be in your nature, Seam boy, but this is the wrong time to turn away friends. You never know when you might need them.

oOo

**A/N:** Please review, especially if you have critique! I'm serious when I say it totally makes my day.

~KaleidoscopeKate


	2. Vaguely

**Vaguely**

oOo**  
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I don't know that I ever forgave Primrose Everdeen. For what? Being born? She hadn't done anything, but yet she was still the reason her sister was gone.

It was beautifully ironic. Half of the papers in the huge glass bowl must've had my name on them, and in the other, Katniss must've taken up at least a quarter. Prim, who had less of a chance than even Sterling, was the one name singled out by fate.

But, as is often the case, humanity intervened.

I felt frozen as she rushed up to the stage. It all went by so quickly, and I don't know what to think. Was it prophetic, my proposition? If we'd left in the morning, we'd have been uncatchable by now. And most of all, I loved her. And I had maybe just realized it a little bit, and now she was leaving. And I would probably never see her again.

But I had to get her back. It was a matter of strategy. When I separated my head from my heart, it all felt easier. She needed a bow, I told her. By whatever means necessary, she was to get her hands on a bow.

She needed to come back, so I could finish telling her what she needed to remember.

'…love you,' I called, but they had already ripped me away from her. She would never hear what I had to say. Maybe it was for the better. I was nearly certain I loved her, but I didn't know how it would affect her. Would it give her another reason to fight for own survival, to come back home to _me_? Or would it distract her, confuse her, weigh her down? It was most important for her to come back.

When she came back, I could finish telling her, and we'd have all the time in the world. She could remember for years and years.

Except when she came back, it was too late: she'd forgotten. She'd forgotten before she even knew what she was supposed to remember.

In a matter of hours, my world was whirled away, and all that was left was Sterling. Staring at me for a minute, as she left the room and I entered.

There was no more pin on her dress.

oOo

I knew what it would represent when I took it off. I knew what my aunt had stood for, certainly. I knew what the mockingjay itself stood for. I thought of it as my own quiet message.

I had heard about Cinna, the traitor to the Capitol. My father's hushed plots and confidential messages had found their way into my ears through cracked doors. The plan was one that made my heart race with fear, excitement, disbelief … and hope.

Maybe they would know what the pin stood for, too. That it had to be Katniss. If anyone could do it (which was a big if), I knew it could be her, and we had lost too many loved ones to stand around twiddling our thumbs, waiting for someone better.

I knew Seam boy loved her when I saw the pure terror in his eyes. It was like seeing my own emotions in a mirror, though our terror was based on entirely different reasons. His was for love and loss thereof; mine was for the dark knowledge looming overhead.

Not that they were really that different, after all. I think he might have known deep down that there was always more to it than what it seemed. I think he knew from the moment he knew about the pin.

My knee-jerk reaction when boys looked at my chest was to give them the evil eye, and if they didn't get the hint, a slap in the face wasn't totally uncalled for.

(I didn't actually have much experience with this.)

But he was gaping for another reason, one that I deemed forgivable. He had noticed the pin, and he, too, knew what it meant.

Of course, only vaguely. Everyone knew what it meant, vaguely.

I watched him for a little while, as he was torn from the girl he loved. He paced around madly outside the Justice Building, kicking rocks and stomping his feet and spouting out the occasional stream of obscenities. After a very short time, they told him he needed to leave.

So I left, too, and when I got home, I sat still for a long time, simply staring out the window. The day was so beautiful, and so calm. After a while, I grew disgusted by the sun, so I drew the curtains closed and dragged myself downstairs to begin making dinner, although I couldn't imagine being hungry again that night.

I didn't know Katniss well, but we had connected. I knew our hearts lay in the same place on matters we could never dream of discussing with each other.

"Madge, darling, you look lovely," my mother crooned from her chair in the corner. "You're not going to see a _boy_, now are you?"

I hesitated for a moment and considered lying, but she always saw right through me, and it was best to downplay it. "No, Mother, today was the reaping," I told her in as calm and steady a tone of voice I could manage. "I'm making a vegetable stew for dinner tonight, and we have some strawberries for dessert. Doesn't that sound good?"

The change in subject satisfied her. "I only wish we had some whipped cream. Bring me my medicine, darling. My headache is back," she added before closing her eyes and leaning back in her chair.

Almost finished with the stew, I glanced at the clock and realized it was a quarter until seven. Mother couldn't be around when the reaping came on television; I had learned that several years prior. Before setting the clock forward almost three hours, I peeked to make sure she wouldn't see me. Then I pulled the curtains closed across each of the three windows in the living room, gently woke my mother to tell her it was well past bedtime, fed her an abbreviated dinner, and helped her to bed. She asked for Father; I told her he had to work late.

A few minutes later, Father came out of his office. He'd had a busy day.

"Supper's ready," I told him, swirling my cooled-but-nearly-untouched stew with a spoon. The television was on some silly show now, yet I knew every house in Panem was tuned in to it, the reaping being only minutes away. "Mother's in bed."

He nodded, ladled himself a bowl of stew, and sat beside me. We watched the reaping in silence.

Last was the gesture, the three fingers, all held up to Katniss. _Goodbye. We respect you. Thank you. We love you. We're here for you, always supporting you. We'll get through this someday, together._

I wasn't sure if Seam boy ever really realized that. The together thing. But at that point, it was vaguely, barely, hardly even an idea.

oOo

**A/N: **As always, reviews much appreciated, dears. :)

~KaleidoscopeKate


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